Add-on Inclusive What's New Plus? as simple cms

Looking at digitalpoint forum makes me wistful for the articles on front page look and welcome.

waindigo recently mentioned possibly making a whatsnew+ which would not only list threads and posts, but pages, Library articles, and potentially other nodes too (as they exist or could exist in other addons). However I know waindigo is terribly busy so I'm wondering if anyone else is interested in this?

If we had an inclusive whatsnew+ addon and it could display the most recent contributions from (admin selected) forums, pages and articles that would be lovely.
Snippet length with Read more ... obviously.

Not sure about how to handle the pics angle (ref digitalpoint) so that front page has a news look with a pic per article. It would be great if the first post of a thread could optionally handle a pic.That would do it and also make threads look cool.
Maybe a default pic derived from its category or something like that if none provided by author.